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April is National Distracted Driving Awareness Month. For Toyota, that means it’s time to double down, not just on awareness, but on action as well. For the fourth straight year, Toyota and Discovery Education have partnered on the Toyota TeenDrive365 Video Challenge, which tasks teenage filmmakers to make short films that inspire safe driving practices. The videos are made by teenagers and aimed at a teenage audience as well.

The challenge received over 1,000 entries this year, but Toyota and Discovery Education recently narrowed the field down to ten finalists. After April 30, the winners of the First Place, Second Place, and Third Place awards will be named. First place comes with a $15,000 cash prize, with lesser cash prizes for the rest.

However, you, the loyal customers, have a chance to participate in the voting as well. From now until April 30, you can go online, watch all the finalists, and vote for your favorite. The video with the most votes will win the People’s Choice Award, which comes with a $5,000 cash prize and a visit to a Velocity network show.

“At Toyota we believe that when good ideas are shared great things can happen. We applaud the teens who entered the challenge to share their vision to improve safe driving among their peers,” said Michael Rouse, President of the Toyota U.S.A. Foundation.

To learn more about a brand that cares this much about teenage drivers and safety overall, come see us here at Bill Walsh Toyota. We’ll even tell you about the upcoming Toyota Safety Sense package, which will be used on small U.S. vehicles by 2017.

Toyota recently shifted gears as a company in an effort to restructure and vary its leadership positions. The management team will become more diversified this year with the promotion of Julie Hamp to be the first Toyota female executive, Christopher Reynolds as the first African-American exec, and European Didier Leroy to the be the first foreigner to serve as EVP. Toyota as a company seeks to gain strength from the internal moves.

Toyota states, “by appointing talented people from affiliates outside Japan to executive positions, Toyota aims to foster innovation by enabling people from many different backgrounds to contribute and provide input.”

Toyota has crossed the Rubicon and is no longer just a Japanese carmaker, but a global car manufacturer with far-ranging leadership needs and requirements. Steering away from all-Japanese male decision-makers towards a more diversified leadership cadre will allow Toyota to find that “next-gear” and race into the future with refreshed vigor.

We at Bill Walsh Toyota are proud to be a part of such a great organization, and look forward to an even brighter future.

Toyota is opening its doors to the public, showcasing the production of the new Mirai in a series of videos. People now have an opportunity to see how Toyota’s first production fuel-cell vehicle is manufactured, an incredibly complex and interesting process.

The videos show a surprisingly small staff in Toyota City, Japan putting together the new Mirai, essentially by hand. This is to ensure that there are no flaws on the hydrogen powered sedan, said Toyota. Although it means that only about three cars per day are made, this is enough to keep up with the limited release.

“For us, [the Mirai] marks a new start,” said Toyota’s president, Akio Toyoda. “This is not to reflect on the past, but rather to celebrate Toyota’s new start, where we take a fresh step towards the future.”

The Mirai represents the culmination of Toyota fuel-cell technology. Right now, only select parts of the world have the infrastructure for hydrogen cars (a.k.a. hydrogen filling stations) such as certain regions of California. As soon as more places embrace this new eco-friendly technology, Toyota can hit the ground running with the revolutionary Mirai.